Favorite or preferred charity?

[clearconscience]

I wosh I could see their faces, I try to leave before they find out.
That way the waitress can't tip them off.

I like them not knowing. Hopefully they feel a larger piece of appreciation that way.
And I'm anti-social and hate acknowledgement.

 

[fredball]

Any of the Vetran groups because the guy or gal running it does nor make 700k a year salery they do it free
we don't do enough for our vets.

 

[Sstrand]

I used to give a lot of time and $$$ to BSA . . . Not any more.

Sheldon

 

[Ura-Ki]

We like donating to both Schriners Children's hospital and Dornbeckers! We also donate to St. Judes, Ronald McDonald house, and The Salvation Army! We havnt found any worthy Vets charities, but we support small local Vet groups when we find them!

 

[cigars]

Draw your own conclusions.

 

[HB of CJ]

Personal Point Of View ... Subjective ... Opinionated ...

About Charity donations. Are you donating to help them do possible good or are you donating to let the top 20% of the PAID staff take up to 90% of all donations for themselves or are you donating to reduce your tax bill OR ARE YOU DONATING TO MAKE YOURSELF FEEL BETTER having nothing to do with the donation helping the charity? Just some hard questions.

Kinda like giving $5 bucks to the homeless guy sitting on the corner with that cardboard sign. Then watch him go inside the Shop Stupid grocery store and buy a bottle of cheap fortified wine. Or once working all day at the local free Thanksgiving dinner charity and seeing the same oh same oh street bums taking too much food to eat. Over and over again each year.

Horrible point of view about charities? Maybe. Maybe not either. We do donate to our local once 100% volunteer zero county money input library. Now somewhat paid with a nasty tax base. Probably an illegal levy election. But ... we still donate what we can to our library. They need the money. We try to research deeply, (too deeply?) charities before we give.

One of the gun lobby outfits we belong to has a credit available on our Oregon State Income Taxes. We try to give what we can. Money is tight as usual. My feeble failed point here is that it is up to us to deeply research all charities before donating a dime. Some charities are complete rip offs. Some are great. I will not name names. That is your job to find out. Difficult.

Happy Holidays. Respectfully. We try to keep it local or inside the State Of Oregon.

 

[CoastRange57]

I wosh I could see their faces, I try to leave before they find out.
That way the waitress can't tip them off.

I like them not knowing. Hopefully they feel a larger piece of appreciation that way.
And I'm anti-social and hate acknowledgement.

I love doing this. We have got this one guy about 3 times now at an Elmers in Hillsboro. I think he is on to us now but I still do it. There was two of them sitting alone at their tables one night, I wish I had been their sooner I would have asked them to join us. I too don't want any acknowledgement, I just do it because I can and it is one small give back to them.

 

[CoastRange57]

About Charity donations. Are you donating to help them do possible good or are you donating to let the top 20% of the PAID staff take up to 90% of all donations for themselves or are you donating to reduce your tax bill OR ARE YOU DONATING TO MAKE YOURSELF FEEL BETTER having nothing to do with the donation helping the charity? Just some hard questions.

Horrible point of view about charities? Maybe. Maybe not either.

Very good qualifying points. It really boils down to some simple business parameters. A " non profit" is no different that a for profit business in most aspects, except accounting and taxation. The bigger the business / non profit, the more inefficient they become. That simple. Non profits operate on a very wide open basis and in operating on unrestricted funds, that is funds that are donated by donors with no restrictions placed on the use of said funds are pretty much good to go for any expense.

Funds that are donated with use restrictions as to what they can be used for is called restricted fund accounting. Those funds have to be spent on specified purposes, usually have time restrictions and performance standards and reporting requirements. Non profits much prefer unrestricted funds since they can do what they want with them with out oversite. Non profits are also historically poorly managed from financial responsibility standpoint, and although they may be restricted funds, they are often "creatively " accounted for.

In my past lives I did small corporate turn around work and my main function was financial statement analysis and cut to the bullsh*t time. I still do that kind of work now and then and just finished up at look at a non profit statement, and all though I have a lot of experience, I had to look up accounting definitions multiple time to see where it all was. Just made me dislike non profits even more. When peoples lives are affected by bad decisions and poor business management it irritates me.

Couple of notes on previous posts.....there are local chapters or groups "locally" of large national charities. This does not absolve them of irresponsible financial behavior. Two of these groups were mentioned in previous posts. My opinion is that a non profit that has layers of administration and management is going to be less than 40% money to the cause, and more like 20%, despite what they say, because definitions as to hows much gets to the root cause vary with accounting tricks.

I give to several non profits. One has no employees, and very low expenses and takes kids on boating outings. Another is the one I mentioned above, warfighters outfitters.org has one person who does not take a full salary, another provides carts for dogs who have lost the use of their hind legs. The one factor about these is that I can call up the primary person at any time and talk to them, they will send me a financial statement that is clear and understandable and they are very clear about their process's.

The smaller the better, but your own due diligence is the best way to make sure your dollars are well used.

 

[DLS]

You really can't trust any charity. They only have to give something BS like 3-5% to their cause. Most of them pad their parties, private jets, and pocket books...

While I don't want to start any pissing matches here I have to say WOW! That statement is so patently false it boggles the mind.

All US based charities are required to provide their financials upon request. If they are of any reasonable size IRS requires those statements to be audited. I'm curious as to then number of charities where you have done a financial statement analysis? Can you name a charity that only gives 3-5%? I'd like to know their names.

 

[CoastRange57]

While I don't want to start any pissing matches here I have to say WOW! That statement is so patently false it boggles the mind.

All US based charities are required to provide their financials upon request. If they are of any reasonable size IRS requires those statements to be audited. I'm curious as to then number of charities where you have done a financial statement analysis? Can you name a charity that only gives 3-5%? I'd like to know their names.

So what percentage of money should directly make it to the cause ??

 

[edslhead]

I just help my friends out. Sometimes they need it.

 

[CoastRange57]

The 50 Worst Charities in America- How to Keep from Being Scammed | SmartAsset

 

[RicInOR]

times now at an Elmers in Hillsboro

hmmm, There is one Elmer's in Hillsboro, near the Jail / Courthouse etc. I've eaten there - even had a vet buy me a slice of pie (ok he is my buddy)

BZ

 

[v0lcom13sn0w]

at work they ask us to voluntarily make a small contribution to the united way. in the box where it asks where they want my contributions to go i always write rocky mountain elk foundation, oregon hunters association, and OFF.

i was skeptical if it actually went there until i started receiving letters from all 3 of them saying "thank you for your donation."

 

[AMT]

My spouse and I usually go and buy $100-$200 in actual groceries and unload it at the battered/abused women and children center.

When we pull up and start unloading bags and bags and bags of groceries you should see their face(s).

We understand that they probably don't have a ton of fridge/freezer space so we try and limit items like that. We usually limit it to just 2 turkey's. Lots of non-perishables (peanut butter, jelly, etc.), and bunches and bunches of canned goods.

While Christmas shopping for the family, we'll look for "deals" on kids toys too. We'll get 10-20 extra gifts for the "kids". We'll also look for deals on throw-blankets, etc. that can be used.

This way we know exactly what our donation is going towards.

We guess that these folks are probably "escaping" a bad situation with little to nothing.

That is our "feel good" donation.